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Solar Electric

Though it has no material form, we can often see it or feel it. It is something we all use every day, and certainly couldn't live without. Energy appears in many forms heat, light, electrical, chemical, mechanical, nuclear and solar. How we use it and how much we use affects us greatly. Although vast amounts of energy are consumed in industry, travel and business, this article is mainly concerned with how it is used in our homes. Often the cost of heating fuel and...

In the last issue I discussed entropy in terms of information and energy. Through an analogy with Special Relatively, I theorized that increasing the spacial order of a system increases its temporal order. Thus, its energy potential is also increased. Does a way exist to increase temporal order directly Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that if the time interval is short enough, then the energy transitions that take place during this interval are indeterminate and may violate...

Free to those with US ZIP CODES ONLY. For international subscriptions see page 45. If you want to receive Home Power Magazine, please completely fill out our free subscription form below, fold it up, tape it, put a 250 stamp on it &amp drop it in the mail. You need only do this once. Once you have responded to Home Power, we will send you each and every subsequent issue free. We encourage you to use this form to communicate with us. Please check the box(s) below that apply to your...

Sometimes a product is so simple, so obvious, that we look at it and wonder why we hadn't thought of it. Well, We Care, Inc.'s CareCover is such a product. It all started with a letter from Home Power reader Sheryl Salasky in Trapper Creek, Alaska. I've just received a wonderful little item in the mail. I'm highly impressed and thought y'all might be interested to know of it. It's an energy efficient, child resistant outlet cover called CARECOVER, put out by We Care, Inc. of Pierre, South...

Keeping Your Cool Do-It-Yourself Alternatives in Refrigeration by Michael Hackleman. Refrigeration is one of the greatest AC DC loads in the household. This is a 30 step treatment toward low-power, energy-efficient refrigeration, and its alternatives. 24pp, 7. A reprint reorganization of the original Servel manual. Identification, parts description, operating instructions, and troubleshooting repair guide for ALL models. Indispensable for reviving that old unit, tuning it for peak efficiency,...

The summer of '88 brought the worst drought North America has had in 50 years. Crop losses were in the billions. Forest fires blazed throughout the Northwest, the Great Plains and Yellowstone National Park. On the other side of the globe, China was also experiencing horrendous drought and related crop damage conditions. Over a million people were hospitalized, and hundreds of other died from the heat. Was it a mere coincidence Or a warning A warning that nature was rebelling Until this year...

Register now for an intensive hands-on photovoltaic workshop beginning July 10th in Colorado. Entitled PV Design and Installation for Practitioners, this unique five or ten day program gives participants practical information on solar powered electrical systems. Learn to design (1st week) and install (2nd week) stand-alone remote PV systems. The course combines classroom theory and hands-on skills training. No prior knowledge of solar or electricity is required. The first week will focus upon...

We've been busy compiling the survey data that comes in with your subscription forms. We thought all of you might be interested in a look at what we're doing with renewable energy, what we're planning on doing, what equipment we now use, and what equipment we are planning on using. We began collecting this data in November of 1987 and here is an update as of 26 March 1989. Feel free to add your data to this survey by using the subs form on page 23. There are now over 10,000 Home Power readers...

If to err is human, then my article in HP 8 should make me Superhuman. I rewrote it to include newly acquired information on pipe losses that was more thorough and accurate than previous info. What I really liked was how optimistic the new chart was. I am conditioned to use charts giving pipe flow losses in feet and I never noticed this chart was in PSI. In order for the figures to be in feet you must divide by 0.43 or multiply by 2.3. This causes the figures to more than double. If any readers...

I have been a renewable energy buff since the 1974 energy crisis. Windmachines for generating electrical power always fascinated me. In 1974, I bought a 200 Watt 12 Volt windcharger and installed it on a 35 foot steel tower. It generated a small amount of power for the house. At the time, I had 5 24V aircraft 35 Ampere-hour batteries (wired in series to produce a pack of 130 VDC). The batteries fed a 1kW. rotary converter, 130 VDC in and 120 vac out, which ran the house. The 12V output of the...

Practically any seacoast and many desert areas can be made inhabitable by using sunshine to pump and purify water. A 10 gallon day solar still now purifies sea water for drinking, cooking and other household needs for a residence near George Town, Exuma, in the Bahamas. Solar energy does the pumping, purification, and controls seawater feed to the stills. This system uses three solar distiller pans 33 wide by 10'3 long. They are insulated, lined with a special corrosion-resistant membrane. The...

Home Power tests an Ancient PV Panel We've been telling you that photovoltaics last a long time. Well, here's living proof that PVs can handle the LONG haul. This venerable PV panel has been in the sun for more than 10 years and still produces more than its rated output. Amazingly enough these silicon marvels don't seem to wear out. In the Spring of 1977 the US Energy R&amp D Administration spent one million dollars on a PV powered irrigation project in Mead, Nebraska. This venture was...

Here's a simple, home-brew, project that indicates how much energy is remaining in your batteries. It's a gas gauge for lead-acid batteries, we call it the Bat-O-Meter. It is an LED bar graph voltmeter with an expanded scale. It can tell you the state of charge of your batteries from across the room, even in the dark. The Bat-O-Meter is not only very simple to build, but also very inexpensive-less than 10. in parts and about an hour of your time are all that's needed. And, in addition to the 12...